Professor Lisa Matisoo-Smith from the Centre for Global Migrations will discuss her major research project 'Africa to Aotearoa: A Genetic Ancestry Study of New Zealanders'.

All living humans can trace their ancestry back to a shared common maternal ancestor who lived in Africa some 150,000 years ago, often referred to as the “Mitochondrial Eve”. Beginning around 60,000 years ago, a small group of people left Africa and began to disperse across the globe. Aotearoa was the last landmass settled by humans, just 750 years ago. For the last few years I have been involved in a deep ancestry study of New Zealanders, using mitochondrial DNA obtained from over 2000 volunteers from across the country. In this talk I will present the results of our research and the implications for understanding both our evolutionary past and our future as New Zealanders.